Greetings, glorious testers!
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Feedback Thread - Alpha One Testing
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Comments
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.
--No issues. Download install process was overall very smooth.
--I did have an issue where during my 10gb download, the progress bars became stuck around 46% and I had to force close the launcher. Upon reopening and the launcher verified files, it appears the patching completed regardless.
Client performance
--No issues. Did not experience a single crash or client fatal errors during the limited time I was able to join.
Server performance
--Massive improvement from previous alpha one NDA session.
--Active abilities experienced some delays which was incredibly frustrating during close ranged combat. Mages had less issues since you can nuke a foe safely at ranged and hold auto attacks.
--Creatures do not appear client-side when traveling faster than character running. Teleportation and mounts appear to move faster than the server is able to send creature positions which caused some frustrating deaths when traveling off the main roads.
There was a moment when an underleveled 20+ raid team was fighting the Brood mother for 10 minutes straight that I stopped for a moment and was like "Whoa, these graphics effect are amazing and I'm seeing them from everbody at the same time and I got no performance drop).
On a side note however, I take issues with the questing.
I'll let the bugs slide (for now)
But there are 4 issues with them that make the Quests unfavorable and far inferior to mob grinding.
1. Too much running - Solution: If we are going to be spending the majority of our questing running so much,
at least make the roads give a speed boost
2. Too few Quest options - Solution - add more or make minimap markers for Qs in very close proximity
3. Many quests give hardly any exp - Solution: Add a couple of zeros to some quests..
4. Gear rewards are too high lvl - Solution: Drop the gear lvl or give two pieces of different lvls.
No issues; the initial download took a while, though.
Client performance:
No issues, it felt better with minimal tearing etc.
Server performance:
Minor rubber-banding (Australia to US-West) this time but a vast improvement on last time.
Having been testing since Dec last year, I can say that the launcher has improved immensely. Aside from the issue everyone experienced this past weekend with lyneth being the only visible server for a short time, I've had no issues on this most recent test. Download was good, installation was flawless and had zero issues needing repair or reinstall.
Client:
There were a few problems with the client not properly syncing with the server at times. Especially during melee combat. It would move my character forward on the server, but the client did not reflect the movement in real time. The client would then update your actual location once you stopped attacking for a few seconds. This was evident by noticing you would no longer be damaging the mob in front of you client side, and the mob would move away from your current location according to the client. Then after a short time of not attacking, your client would catch up with the server and the client would then show you where the server believed you to be. This happened a handful of times and seemed to be persistent until you relogged or left the area. There were also issues with the UI showing the tool tip for the last item you interacted with, which followed your mouse cursor until you mouse over another item to see its tool tip. The tool tip would then begin to display properly by only displaying what you mouse over.
Server:
The server has certainly improved immensely since our initial tests. Movement is much more fluid with exception to the previously mentioned syncing issues. Some mobs still "reset" at time when they shouldn't and there are still minor collision issues with gatherable nodes (trees having larger collision box than their sprite) preventing gathering the node unless you approach from a specific angle. Much less downtime during this Playtest than before. Other than that, the obvious server reboot requirements to fix major bugs that the dev team are already tracking.
Comparing the first playtest in pre alpha to the most recent play test certainly instills a confidence in me that the dev team is hard at work and I'm happy to have been able to contribute to this process and help build this game together with you all. I have very high hopes for the initial and long-term success this game will have. Thank you to all of the development team and everyone involved.
All other download services and games perform fine, except for Ashes... and I eliminated the possibility of network or hardware issues on my end.
I don't know if I can provide any technical output or logs for you guys, but if I can please let me know!
The server ran well with little noticable lag, there were performance issues and felt clunky but hopefully this something that is improved as we move closer to launch.
[*] Download/installation process
I initially had a lot of problems over the course of the last 3 weeks trying to install the game. Had support ticket in. Recent launcher update allowed more insight on the process. It looked like on my end any time there was a dip in connectivity during download, and the connection was lost - it was never restored. Any time download speed froze I restarted launcher (no restore/repair) and it picked up where it left off. Chugged my way through install - took about 25 restarts of launcher to install.
[*] Client performance
My PC running AoC current is a dumpster. Ran on Medium gfx. So had issues with falling through world when loading slowly, running through the world and enemies loading in after I passed them or worse - having a pack of pirates load in on top of me. Visual bugs and misc issues with client side I reported with in game tool
[*] Server performance
Really good
-One additional comment here, when quests in an area bugged out we learned that if everyone in the area CTRL+T'd away and came back, the quest would generally reset and fix the issue with the missing doodad or interact.
Download and install Never had any probs with this before - until this weekend when the patch came through, and for some reason, it reinstalled the whole game, onto a different drive on my pc - as originally had installed it to my D drive (since c/drive was full), so with this patch, I guess i wasnt paying enough attention, while clicking the 'yeses', and it did a complete new install on my C Drive which was full, but I just ended up deleting a whole plethora of other games I dont play, to make room for it.
Client Performance Never any problems here.
Server Performance All good - couldnt get to the sieges due to work commitments this time but previous ones, fine.
General Feedback
Summary All in all, it was a good, wait.. GREAT experience, much better than I expected. On my server at least, I could tell people were having a FABULOUS time! The community were friendly and helpful. I feel privileged to be be able to be part of this whole process. Steven appearing on the server is really a bonus
The servers ran so much better than all of my previous testing sessions. It had a great feel of the game coming together and really ignited my anticipation once again for the game. Keep hammering out the great improvements!
Download/Installation: The download and installation went very well.
Client performance: The client ran very well and stable. Not a single crash.
In some areas, however, there were extreme fps drops.
Server performnce: The servers were running really well. No comparison to the last weeks. I am very impressed.
The installer and client were as expected, and no real issues. I do find it irritating having to find my password each time, but otherwise it's okay. The launch time after the launcher came up seemed to take a bit, but the real time hog was after the client started, and clicking Play.
Character creation and all that was fine for the preview alpha weekend, heck, probably fine for the regular alpha when that starts.
I didn't get super far this test weekend, so I can't comment too much.
When I first got to the Merchant, he, or one of the NPCs... I can't recall which, said to sell him the lesser essence for money... however, I hadn't gathered any. Game should check that you actually picked some up before saying that, if you didn't get any, it should say, go back, kill more of the monsters, collect essence... if it didn't say anything about gathering essence, the first time it tells you to kill them, it should, and keywords like lesser essence should be highlighted each time, with a different text color (and probably bold to help color blind people) or something, to make sure you take note of it.
Speaking of color blind... While I have no disabilities, I'm a firm believer that the main options should come up before any cinematic or anything else. Let the players set screen resolution, captions, any disability aids, etc all after the launcher, before starting the game the first time. These quick options should always be available from the first screen as well.
As noted in the Known Issues, when doing the crafting quest, there wasn't any of the items there... yeah, slaying the monsters got some of the essence needed, but the logs and stone... even when finally finding the stones and trees, it would often say you need X version of the tool to get it, even if that tree looks exactly the same as the tree that I could cut down. Way too few trees, and/or too few logs, per tree. As to the not having the right version of the tool, perhaps a different color highlight so note you're version isn't strong enough? Say it stays white, gold, or whatever like it is now, but orange if you don't have the proper tool to cut it. This way you know there's a resource there, but don't waste time trying, unless you want to see which version of the tool you'll need.
Also had floating trees... which made it impossible to gather from them... all floating trees I saw were gather-able types...
Grave markers on the map to help you find your body, this can lead to a general area, not super specific, but like the hunt for the missing cave guys... how those had blue highlights, same thing for finding your body, a small zone to search in. If your body is robbed (first death, body can't be robbed, but tell player that in the future, they'll loose a portion of their goods on death, and it can be looted by other players if they don't find their own body in time), that zone disappears, as does the marker, so you know it was looted, and don't waste time trying to hunt it down. I think they are supposed to be there, but I didn't ever see one for mine.
Speaking of the missing guys in the cave, that mission should direct one to the front of the cave, I didn't see any such indication, though after getting in the cave, I got the blue search zones (never found them, but that was near the end of when I could test this weekend anyhow).
One minor case of an effect still showing on my character, but it was over. A relog was all that was needed.
Nearly got stuck once under a tree branch... spinning the camera around gave the scary from inside the head view that sometimes happens in games. It eventually managed to let me out, not sure if there's an /unstuck command or not, but if not there should be.
Sprinting screen effect... I'm guessing that's just alpha, not final. Not bad, but not sure if it's needed... also, I'd have to think there should be some stamina drain after a while.
All in all, for a pre-alpha, pretty impressive. Graphics looked great. Combat was okay, not 100% dialed in, but pre-alpha, I'll let it slide, especially as I didn't get to experience enough yet to really say what needs done there yet. On the hopeful case that I get in next alpha and forward... then more chance to see about that. About the only thing that was hard to tell who I was tabbed to, sometimes it wasn't who I'd think it should be. Most of the telegraphs were good enough.
My only big issue comes down to combat feel, which I know is something that is still being worked on. My biggest interest is the tank class and I noticed with the melee auto-attack swing that you got locked into a really long animation and lost movement control of you character. A step forward or two was a part of the swing so it forced you to take those steps with no way out. That movement lock felt really clunky IMHO and I wonder if that is planned to be something that is kept in as combat is developed.
I participated in the last siege test prior to servers coming down. It went pretty well, some lag and skipping around in larger population areas or load in areas around spawn points after deaths. I'm running an Alienware Aurora R11 w/3080 card. Overall very positive experience. The game will skip around some when jumping in the siege castle hallways. May be a rendering issue.
Another known issue, but notating my experience: The most consistent issue I saw was delayed rendering throughout the world of mobs and other players at times.
Unsure if this qualifies for feedback you want, but I noticed during the siege that in congested areas with many spell effects going off friend and foe Name Tags would all turn White and it became very difficult to identify friend from foe.
Had a great time testing, thanks again.
No issues with either process. Just took a little bit to download.
Client Performance:
No issues. I didn't have any lag or disconnects while playing.
Server Performance:
NOTE: I played on Ultra settings for the first 2 days, then put it to High. Still had the issues below.
Seemed a little sluggish. Mobs took too much time to load while on my horse. I would stop and be right in the thick of things when they finally loaded.
Some stuttering with mobs in the distance, and with player's characters up close. I would see another character near me, but see their horse off in the distance riding away. Or I would see just their uniforms and nothing else. Kinda like the headless, and handless, horseman. LOL
Some quest items were invisible to me. Like the binding table. I had to search for the "E" to pop up.
Logged in underground in the water a few times. CTRL + T didn't work (tried a few times), and logging out and back in didn't work either. Had to drown myself. (You all did a great job with animation of drowning. It was a little freaky watching my character convulse when the air ran out. LOL)
I just wanted to make note that while playing during the preview I decided to stream on twitch as I went. Now I don't have the top of the line PC but it's pretty decent. I wanted to note that the CPU usage of Ashes was out of this world, I put it down to the fact the game isnt optimised yet, but just wanted to flag it sooner rather than later. I use a i5-7600k and I was sitting at 60% CPU usage constant, this made it quite difficult to stream smoothly.
Thanks !
Smoother then a fresh jar of skippy
Client performance
No crashes
Server performance
When I saw other players running in the distance it wasn't smooth, more like spot motion animation.
There were times when my frame rate would drastically drop for about 2 minutes then go back to normal. I didn't notice this in any place in particular it just seemed to happen randomly.
Download/installation process
- Download speed not particularly fast
- Occasionally required to patch twice to work
Client performance- Played on ultra-settings, no significant issues
Server performance- Some rubber banding on occasions
General FeedbackIssues
- Feel through the world a few times, unstuck fixed most times.
- Horse riding through water caused inability to dismount, only way to get off the mount was to reload the game.
- Draw distance on some game elements varied with them either only appearing when already near or appearing after passing through.
- NPC`s appeared to jitter as they rotated on an axis to stay focussed on you as you walked around them.
- Some quests were not completable, even with aborting and retrying.
Game world- Biome flora elements feel placed and classical/formal arrangement rather than informal/organic which is natural. Elements placed at regular interval/spacing rather than clusters and varying quantities.
- Gatherable
- Did not appear to have a discernible relationship to the area they were in and so therefor will be harder to find and reliant on random encounters. No apparent thematic placement.
Gold- Easier to obtain than mats. If the collectable gold rate exceeds the collectable material gatherable rate, then perhaps crafting will become a lesser chosen activity.
MobsInstallation was 10x better than the original one. I had to miss several tests because it was so slow, that by the time it finished I either had to get to bed or the test was over with. It could have just been me, but during the install, there were times where it looked like it froze and then jump several percent.
Not exactly sure your definition of Client. If you mean the app login screen, no issues with it. If you mean the loadout screen with character lists, the only issue I run into is the sudden screen stretch when selecting dwarf. Not so bad on 1920x1080 resolution, but any higher and you can't even see the top of the dwarf's head.
Server performance. NPC load-ins were slow, especially when mounted. I ran into everything without even using the sprint ability. Major issue with the Ferry system that would stick all players together. Eventually the game would register fall damage and you die, forcing to respawn elsewhere and play catch up if you were running with a group. I was running on Ultra settings and the server handled spell particles very well, I was surprised by that, however performance dropped off when more than ten players were gathered in a single area. Hitboxes are also off, but not as bad as they were a month ago.
Overall, I say this has been a successful Alpha One Preview and I'm looking forward to the changes implemented to increase performance on all fronts.
My last thing I want to add is: Please, please, please remove the animation lock for melee weapons. Not only does it get players into trouble with aoe and pack pulls, but I ran into several situations where testers were all using wands so they weren't restricted. To Clarify: I don't care if someone uses a wand, I actually love their animations, but for those that love axes, sword/shield, greatsword, etc. They felt a little bummed to either deal with animation lock or swinging a stick.
Client performance = No Issues
Server performance = Randomly clipping into trees X3. Other than that no major issues, Latency was an minor (as always) issue with West NA connecting from New Zealand. Which is they plan for release.
As for "The everything else" "don't focus on parts". I do feel this needs to be said, if a shadow of any of that is in release It's not going to go well! Especially loss of items on death. (Which has no place in a game with "loss of items due to caravan attack" from a development point of view.)
Client performance: As one would expect from a technical alpha, my 3080 seemed to be putting in a lot more work than I expected it to have to.
Server performance: Overall I thought it was quite good. Obviously when everyone was pulled into one node things got rough.
Client performance - No crashes and only time I had major framerate drops were in the sieges. Set graphics to low and still had issues in areas with a lot of people. Other areas though I had no issues and game ran smooth. 60-110 fps jumped around outside of siege. Sadly forgot to check during siege. Fell through map while using teleport spell(not on mount)
Server performance - Never had any disconnects even when I had a large lag spike and game froze for a minute. It resumed without issue. This only happened during siege.
I'm not sure if this will be seen, but I will note what I experienced here anyways.
Client performance:
- I uninstalled the launcher from my previous ashes of creation test, to reinstall it for the alpha 1 testing. However, whenever I closed and open the game again, it will open the installer instead of the launcher, and force me to update the entire game again.
This happened multiple times where I would wait for the entire download again, which could take upwards of 30min +. Eventually I gave up as eventually it would get too tedious to download everything again.
Server Performance:
- I think this is quite important, during the login loading screen, where the static image is showing. If I were to alt-tab, it would freeze my computer, as well as extend the loading time.
- Game would take awhile to load upon login, where everything is untextured initially, and take around 30seconds to update and refine all textures.
- I'm not sure if this is server performance, but I fell through the map with blink... super annoying as the fall did not kill me, and I had to start a new character because there was no way back.
- I had a game crash once during my play test as I was questing. Not sure what triggered it though.
Anyways, I'm not running a weak setup as well.
I7-8700K
GTX 3070
DDR4 16GB
I forgot my motherboard, but you get the point.
Updated my computer for cyberpunk, got super disappointed.
Eitherway, this is just what I experienced. Thank you for checking out this post.
Client performance: Overall performance was pretty steady outside of siege-related stuff. I didn't mind the load times, and most of gameplay went fairly smoothly.
Server performance: It seemed like servers performed pretty well, given where they were at when the under-NDA testing period started. 2000 bears definitely smashed the final siege, and the people and special effects in a concentrated area was a bit much on the hardware and latency, but it is performing well enough for smaller groups to get through gameplay and content with relatively few issues.
Other feedback
Characters: I like where the male and female versions of the armor look more similar, and less with the accentuated boobplate. Also not sure why guys get an action stance and gals have their hips off to the side like they're posing for a camera. Stances looking the same would be better to show the differences IMO.
Climbing: There's some pretty tall peaks that can be accessed for some really great views of the gameplay area. I took a couple screenshots of some really nice views. I feel like some areas have rocks that are too hard to climb, or can't be climbed at all, making it tougher to get a good view of the nearby area.
Questing: With all the time and not being focused on raiding, it was fun to see more of the quests and where they lead! Though it also meant a lot of back-and-forth across long distances rather than more centralized quests per node area. I was hoping to get the Corvid Castigator set but that was pulled for the A1PW test. It seemed like there was a distinct lack of quest sites at most nodes, even ones that were up to a village, so I'm hoping there will be more questgivers across the world that we'll see in the next test. Sadly most of the stuff that was worth using instead of cheapo vendor gear was higher level (12-15) and without a dedicated group, all the questing and some grinding only got me to 10. The goblin camp is way too dense for less than a full group to approach, same with the Apparition quest. A few quests were broken in critical spots, and the florist failed to give me their final quest, so I'll be looking forward to trying those when they're working. There's little incentive for anyone to redo a quest they've completed, so gathering groups for higher level content was fairly difficult in general. I'm glad there were some "tough" soloable events, like taking down King Krakkus or the creature from the failed ritual. And I never seem to find the jolly green giant Xandelv anymore in the northwest.
Crafting: It really wasn't worth it to stop for resources, especially for how fast they'd be lost by dying in any way. I don't like the massive amounts of wood that need to be harvested compared to any other resource, and 1 charcoal per redwood tree or 3 per higher-tier wood is abysmally low. If it were a "every tree you see can be chopped" sorta game it would be no issue, but that is most certainly not the case, Landmark devs, I am gonna say "Burled wood" to the current lumberjacking to progress ratio. Other than that, it seemed off that only certain blacksmiths or stations could facilitate certain items, rather than the player being able to craft any schematic they obtain. The Lava-Forged Shield with +3% block wasn't worth the effort compared to the dented shield's +1.5% block since the most important part of blocking is having ANY shield. That said, when these issues have been reconciled, I'll be glad to try more crafting! It was good that A1PW had resources everywhere instead of just a few select areas.
Attributes: These seem to need a bit of a review, though I'm sure they aren't fully balanced yet. It was odd that +1.5% blocking meant +1.5 blocking, and likewise with +3 blocking from the better shield. I get the feeling that some things aren't exactly percentage based but get represented as such, so making them a bit more consistent would help with clarity and knowing what's really the better item to use.
Player corpse looting: I couldn't find my own drops after dying anywhere, even if I made sure I died in a spot I could find, and absolutely nobody came through the areas. I never tried to loot friends, but it seems like sitting on their body and waiting for them to return was the only way they may be able to find it. I think I saw 1 body to loot in the siege.
Once "Launch Game" is clicked, there was a long lag (20 - 40 seconds) before the Loading screen would appear. About 1/3 of the time, the Loading would crash and I would not be able to use my mouse on any screen and nothing was happening in the game. The only way to resolve was cltr-alt-del to get to the Task Manager to kill AoC. No error message was given, just the frozen screen and mouse.
When Loading was successful, I would hear sounds for about 20 seconds before the Loading screen went away. Once in the game, about 1/3 of the time the cursor would appear but everything on screen was frozen. Resolution required mousing over to the Task Manager on the other monitor and killing AoC. No error message was given, just the frozen screen.
While playing, I received the error "Out of video memory trying to allocate a texture..." on a pretty regular basis which would close the client. In a three hour session, it would happen at least twice. My graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB.
I didn't notice any performance issues during routine game play.
I did lag and crash during the Siege test when everyone gathered around to port in. That happened twice. The first time I missed the siege start and couldn't participate but the second siege run I got back in time to participate. During the siege there was lag whenever too many folks (40+) got in one spot with all the effects occurring. It was playable, but choppy. Upon the conclusion of the third siege, I crashed again when everyone was ported out with the bears. After the fourth crash when we all met in town and 1000 bears were spawned, I didn't try and get back in before the servers were taken offline. Each time the error was the "Out of memory" error.
the Nodes of harvesting should give you a chance to give you more than 1 unit from each item.
- when using the beginner tools the tools below the desired tool should still be able to harvest that item with a higher chance of not getting anything from that item.
- harvesting after fighting - there should be a way to put your weapon away to harvest. pressing Q again doesn't seem to work.
Game Play
- for the quest to make your wand or Sword seemed to be broken - it took me to 4 locations which were optional and said 4/8 completed. I harvested extra and still said 4/8 since the nodes were spent from other users I had to travel far and wide to find what I was looking for. Only to find that the quest still said gather more resources. - I abandoned the quest, and tried it again. only to find that it did the same thing. Once I canceled I saw that I could buy items from the blacksmith, but if you are in the quest you cant buy anything from the blacksmith.
- if you are making your items you should be able to get better stats on your gear, or get better results if you make it more than once or twice. Finding all those units and getting 1 unit for each this would be a nice reward.
- Exploring the cave - the the small area on the map to find the first person seemed to be missing. I looked high and low for that person and could not find it.
- The path to the left leading into mushroom land once you get past a certain point the mushrooms and a response time of like a sec. is a great place to level if you want to kill a mushroom over and over with zero to no response time on the next mushroom, for people exploring this area make it a change cause you literally try to run away. After all, they overpopulate that area once you kill 1 for 2.
- on death, losing your good is a number there should be a way to get back to your body where you can pick up your loot, Especially if lots of your goods are harvest items. There was a grind to get those items only to find out you lost part of your stash due to a death.
- Pressing Q or Mouse Left Click - there is an option but I stumble on this twice. Q would stop working and the left click would start working or vs versa. They should both work. or you should be able to set this in the control key-bind area. I tried but my mouse would not bind.
- Will there be a bank? Carrying all my items around is nice but losing them does put a bummer on carrying them around for a death.
- When on the house mount - I got cant dismount while swimming and will be far from the water at this point (Ctrl+t) was only waiting to dismount