Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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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.
Feedback Thread - Alpha One Testing
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Comments
Download/Installation process: went very well with a complete blank slate PC
Client performance: agree with @ashrahm linking server selection to last played character would be nice, but no issues to speak of, and with up to date PC specs everything ran on max settings.
Server performance: logged back in and lost a couple hours of gameplay (not just xp, but was moved to an earlier point of play: level, location, quest status, ect.) I think this was isolated to known events with the server Norlan. Mobs spawn late (especially one mount or high speed) often surrounding me.
(I'm new to game testing, so if these notes aren't relevant during alpha my apologies)
General systems (taken from Alpha 1 overview list):
Combat systems: I saw plenty of people saying melee combat needs tweaks so I'll just add I agree, and I also think the ability arc should be tweaked to allow mobs immediately in front of PC to be hit without backing up.
Mob AI/behavior testing: To me this is the largest opportunity, but I'm not sure how hard it is to change mob AI at later game stages. The mob leash feels immersion breaking, and mob movement and reset seems very out of sync with player. Mobs seems to chase almost indefinitely until they are attacked, then teleport back to spawn point. At some point it would be exciting if the mobs could interact with each other, but for now I'd be happy if I could attack a mob chasing a fleeing player and have the mob switch aggro to me without resetting to full health.
Player-based economy: Are there considerations for copper/silver as fractions of gold? If I wanted to sell stacks of lumber for 1 gold there is no lower price point and 2 gold doubles the cost. It could also lower game inflation since everything already seems to cost increments of ten or hundreds of gold.
Node features: Once caravans, player trading, and artisan paths come online I am excited to see if nodes level faster. As is, I think the xp required to level starter nodes (crossroads and camp) should be reduced. Norlan has a low population for the test and we have not even spawned lvl 1 nodes after several days of questing. IMO since most of the fun node stuff comes online at town level or higher, the timeframe to advance a node should be adjusted down based on a predicted player population working towards advancement. For instance a crossroads (on the wiki) may take a few hours to advance from wilderness, but a crossroads should probably take a small guild (maybe 20-30 players) a few hours to advance. In contrast, a metro should take hundreds of people many weeks to advance.
Ancillary systems:
-mounts should be able to move more freely, they get stuck on a lot of small terrain and cannot jump over
-mount abilities should default keybind to number keys replacing standard class abilities when mounted
-guild progression should be smaller xp to advance with smaller rewards to make goals attainable for smaller guilds
-gathering should be allowed in combat, or in combat time reduced to make gathering more fluid
-adding basic artisan paths so that gathering/refining/crafting can boost node progression would be nice
Thank you for all your hard work. I truly enjoy testing AoC, and I hope my feedback and continued testing helps, in some small way.
Having similar experience. Running on a Digital Storm PC, 32 Gig RAM, Win 10 OS, Intel chipset, Nvidia RTX 3080 card, 1 gigabit wired connection. Launcher is stalling out at 12% download progress and 30% applied changes. Attempted repair four times - same result every time.
And please make them stackable Jesus they take so much inventory and so much time to craft.....
I have only played one day . This game is very nice for an early build. Here are a few thoughts:
1) The install was fast and no issues
2) I LOVE that I can easily swap the keybinds even in the alpha. I like the graphical map showing all the keys. Gold star
3) I wandered aimlessly looking for wood and stone. I saw in the known issues "Various harvestable resources are not spawning where they should be on the world map, or may be double-spawned in some locations." So I guess that explains that situation.
4) The quest list and mini map -- I would love to be able to (eventually maybe Beta 1 or 2 ) configure the map to more easily show where quest goals are. . Maybe a hotkey to swap between the primary quest.
5) I would like to be able to save notes to the map. (Found cedar wood here type thing)
6) It would be awesome if our custom keybinds were saved server side so if we have to re install we can just import quickly.
7) I hope eventually the UI can be moved if we wish and it the size can be changed. I thought the quest details box text was small. I like being able to scale the UI .
8) I see the game has coords listed. Perhaps a way to place a marker at a certain coordinate
That is everything. I have had a blast.
When riding a mount, load in of mobs is a issue. What may appear to be safe area to stop is not on multiple occasions.
Lvl 1 mobs not only tracking but doing incredible damage to a 15...seems a bit much.
No rubberbanding.
Was surprised to learn that the equipment I started the game with was better than the equipment you first earned at some of the first couple of quests. Made it to level 8 and I think only the boots were better than what I started with.
The game is actually entertaining to play. I did feel the drive to want to keep playing.
Would be nice to have the ability to have more adjustments in sound volumes and in graphic settings. What I am talking about is the ability to adjust music vs environment. Adjust contrast, lower/raise flora, bloom effects, etc..
I would like to see some additions to combat. Right now I hit Q for attack with weapon and then the number keys for special attacks. This feels a little archaic compared to some of the newer games out in giving different key combinations for fighting.
Not entirely sure why PVP was forced on everyone when you guys have already tested the system. Unless you were monitoring to see how many players were just ganking and PKing other players just for the hell of it. Which frankly is all I saw. In the nodes and outside of the nodes players just killing players for not actual reason other than they could.
Would like to have the option to use some sort of a bank/storage at the nodes. If I am out running around collecting resources etc and I die I loose a good portion of these. Would be nice to be able to bank these for safe keeping. I did not see an option to do and saw others talking about this as well.
Any way keep up the good work. Keep up the progress and look forward to the next test session.
I am running the game on a 4k monitor, but have to downscale to 1440p to be playable. Right now, 1440p with medium settings gets me 40ish FPS out of cities, and 20-30fps in cities. Monitoring software shoes 7GB VRAM usage on average, and a whopping 15GB of RAM usage - I actually had to go buy (not download) more RAM to play this game. CPU usage is fine, never really pushing above 50% utilization.
I understand this is in alpha and hardware optimization is a long way from perfect, BUT, the 16GB requirement for RAM is pretty shocking considering the average system probably has around 8. Unsure if DDR4 will run better but still, seems like a bit of barrier to entry considering this isn't a preverbal "AAA Title".
Game was very laggy in starting area and near towns. Got better in areas with no people. Game was slow to load people and monsters when going to new area, many times would get killed by invisible person or creature. Although no rubberbanding, often times people would be in the wrong/impossible spots.
As far as game features my concerns are these:
I appreciate you taking time to read all that.
Edit: Also one system that would be good to implement in my opinion would be a minor speed buff to roads. A great deal of my and others time was spent running through woods and in middle of mob groupings. Safety of roads does not seem worth time spent using them, minor speed buff might make roads better to traverse then the straight line method.
The average gamer should have DDR4 these days with 16GB or more. All gamers I know have 32GB+. Tech moves along quickly mate
Download/installation process:
No issues at all
Client performance:
FPS stayed between ~40-50 on ultra settings and 4K resolution, windowed fullscreen while having other videos play on a secondary (ultrawide) monitor. Inputs seemed very responsive and I never really got any huge FPS dips -- although I was never in an area with a ton of people fighting at once.
Server performance:
Way better than I expected, ping was solid between 18-30 ms connected to the us_east server from CA. Although there were some other players rubber-banding from my perspective. I expect that's probably either their internet or client-side prediction being the issue in that situation?
Download speed dropped significantly compared to Preview test
Client performance
FPS drops with every test. It used to be better
Server performance
Server optimization is much better, but spawning monsters next to you doesn't work well.
Tank concept problems.
The main problem is survival. At the moment, Tank has less survivability than Mage or Cleric.
At the same time, the Tank also has much less damage than both of these archetypes; therefore, it is also far from the future Fighter.
Damage is not critical to the Tank, in fact, the main feature of this archetype is survivability. The tank should be able to kill 5-6 monsters at a time without dying. Yes, he will do it for a long time, but he will.
Therefore, this is the situation now. A tank needs a group for a comfortable game - that's good, but other Archetypes don't need a group, and it turns out that the Tank is now just a burden.
P.S Removed a Level 15 Tank, which I did without using bugs, grinding raptors.
So many things wrong with the movement keys' keybinds. Two MoveRight's, one MoveForward, and one backward masquerading as a MoveForward. Removed the extra right and it went away completely.
Screenshot:
two-rights-dont-make-a-left.png
Download/Patching: No problems
Game Client: Still got often crashes
Fatal error: [File:Unknown] [Line: 198] Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost. (Error: 0x887A0006 - 'HUNG')
Sadly my DXdiag is too long to post it here
Server: Mobs appears too late in the world, when the Character is moving fast (with Mount f.e.).
Quests:
"Spirit Sampling" still bugged
Additionally for the Minimap itself it's nice that it shows you were enemies and quests are but it would be nice to see something similar to Guild Wars 2's minimap be implemented where it has a zoom an pan function.
I'm a little frustrated that combat doesn't end quickly where i can go harvest a resource without "waiting" to be out of combat; would love a quick resolution to fighting.
Quests fonts being grey and hard to see; would like a more visual pleasing color to be able to read.
Formerly T-Elf
After the purchase on 21st of July I had a hard time just figuring out where to download the alpha one launcher. At first I was waiting for an email with a download link. After a while I grew a little more restless and started looking around. After many hoops and trials I finally found it hidden in plain sight.
The download path for the launcher and the client was exactly the same and I feared they'd somehow get tossed there into one folder with either's files mixed together, but I'm glad a folder was created separately for each (some programs out there don't do that... I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to organizing things).
I tried to log in just when all the servers were down. I can't remember the message I got when trying to log in, but I do remember being a little confused and having to search around to find out that the servers were down at the time and that's why I couldn't get in. This is to say maybe the feedback in the launcher could've been more informative or something, maybe a link to more info or whatever, if at all possible and/or worthwhile QoL feature.
Once the servers opened up at around midnight of 22nd I got down to finally installing the game which went without issues.
Client performance:
My FPS was uncapped and the max frames I got was up to around 101 at default max settings. Looking around there were millisecond frame drops that felt bad, going from 100+ down to 80 and 60, perhaps even lower, especially when turning my view to where a lot of NPCs were and/or a lot of players OR when I got closer to such an environment and it started to load them in for me. Throughout all that, the ms stood at a relatively constant 11 ms. Once I capped the frames at 60 the frame-drop hiccups weren't as blatant and the game felt smoother, though not perfect perfect, and ms still at around 11.
Monitor: LG 27GL850 27" 1440p 144Hz (Freesync enabled, average response time)
MOBO: MSI B450 Tomahawk Max
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (12C/24T 3.7 GHz)
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB)
RAM: G.SKILL RipJaws V 2x16GB 3600 MHz CL16
PSU: Asus ROG Strix PSU 750 W
SSD: Crucial MX500 1TB (game is on this one, OS on another SSD)
Server performance:
My character was responsive from the get go. Other players and NPC looked normal. Some players in the distance would seem choppy when they moved.
There were no crashes.
Monsters would pop up on my screen with relatively irregular patterns once I ran around with a mount regardless of my frames (usually at a constant capped 60). I'd sometimes crash into an invisible monster who would then appear and start attacking me. Most of the time I'd have run past the monsters in their invisible state and they'd appear on my screen and minimap only after the fact.
Using abilities at mobs sometimes didn't have a solid feedback with sound popping off with a mini delay and so forth, basically felt off from time to time, though this might not be a server issue.
Additional feedback on Launcher QoL:
I wish the launcher saved my password. I tend to use random passwords and need to find and copy it for Ashes every time.
Also, I'd wish the server was saved in a way that it's already selected, for example, based on which server I last played on.
No issue at all (once I found the client)
Client performance
Clean so far, no issues. Did have a log in issue and then realised my CAPS was on. Might be an idea to add a highlight for silly people (ie me) so say that when password fails
Server performance
Generally ok. I'm still messing around with mob spawn distance, any lag or such, also how it plays with maximum mobs around me but so far so really good. Few issues with targeting but that's another subject.
Game performance great. No rubberbanding for me, just the occasional load freeze when moving through the world.
UI SUGGESTION: Display decimal stats from gear in the character sheet. Example some gear gives .50%, 0.25% or as little as .10%. If I saw the exact numbers in the character sheet, I would be reassured that those decimal % stats are taking affect.
UI SUGGESTION: Make the skill cooldown clock more easily visable. Right now it is quite hard to see at a glance how long until a skill is ready, or how long a buff / debuff will last in particular because those icons are even smaller.
BUG: Whenever I first log in to my character I will typically fall through the floor. I usually seem to land in some underground water and can then swim to the regular oceans/lakes/rivers, turn back to the land and climb out normally.
BUG: Sometimes when rearranging my inventory I am unable to move items into an empty slot as the game believes there is already an item there, I need to relog to resolve this.
BUG: Sometimes when riding the Tidesnapper in a river I will get sucked down to the river bed and cannot swim to the surface, so I slowly lose breath. I have to swim to the shore in order to breathe.
BUG: Sometimes after exiting water whilst on a mount I am prompted that I am unable to perform a dismount due to supposedly still being swimming.
BUG: Sometimes while riding a mount I move permanently at mount sprint speed, then I am able to move even faster by activating mount sprint.
BUG: Sometimes after looting a mob, there is a permanent loot tooltip at my cursor location.
Please Note: I didn't to test that much, got on, and was running around. Some of the next few things im sure was noted/commented on, and any active things we are testing was submitted in game as well.
I am unsure if this is a 'party/group bug' or just something related to deaths in general. Every other death it feels like that we have in the party, the other person becomes invisible entirely to the other player, or they become invisible on their mount or you can see the person where they mounted, not moving, but their mount is. Basically we were relogging, which fixed it, just posting here as well. The log out causing the party to disband is a small irritant, but fine.
Fox of the Pyre Mount
When moving forward, the tails don't sway too much, and are mostly in tandem with one another, and it looks almost phallic.
The Flame does not cover the entire tail tip.
Something else I noticed, you can unlock the 3rd level of skills, then remove some points from other, lower levels to reallocate them, bypassing the 'you need 10 points to unlock tier 3'
Other, really small things (which I know will be focused on come beta, and am positive they have been addressed):
After hitting level 5, there is almost no way of progressing outside of farming mobs - for being an alpha is ok, however this discouraged my partner from wanting to continue testing and halted our will to push through. I also am aware that when certain nodes/towns develop, other locations get barred from quests. Having some contingency quest in play here would be nice, like maybe the NPCs you would get quests from would hint at there being something, once this area is upgraded, and then tease that 'that their friend in Na'la might need our help' just to kinda streamline us to these locations based on how the server has evolved.
I forget the names specifically (wrote this part the morning after) there is one quest you can get, The Barter? from a guy in the tent at the spot you land from taking the ferry heading to na'la, that has you take a tome to a certain area that does not exist.
The Crafting Sword/Wand quests can bug each other out. I had completed the sword quest, had all the ticks etc and it said 'talk to blacksmith' but I picked up the want quest first, and it prevented me from turning in the sword quest.
Abandoning the "making a crossroads" quest triggers it to be automatically started again and back in the log.
Not sure if it was designed to be this way, but the navigation guy (at the spot where you land from the ferry to na'la - again sorry about the missing of names - next day here) you can just keep clicking through guessing the locations until you get it write, and if you do this in a party, the other person does not get credit for this, nor can they do it. an idea to prevent this would be to make the waypoints that are required for the quest and not a 'options' to pick from to provide. I also was watching Jay from Paradox do this at one point, and it had been mentioned that doing this wrong would trigger a lock out? IIRC. I got the lockout, but it gave me like a 30 second window, where i could just tell the NPC, let's start over, and then could guess again. On the other hand, my partner was completely locked out, and at the 'lets start over piece' would not provide options for her.
(in depth set up for what we triggered and how) we both got the quest to go around the tent, my partner didnt turn it in, but it allowed me to, and I continued to plug away at coords to try to break the quest (yes, trying to break for the sake of testing though). at this point, my partner was unable to turn in her quest, nor got credit from the next portion, even though everything to this point the party process shared progress and almost all completion tasks.
As stated in my previous posts, I am extremely excited to be testing this with everyone, and the experience I have had thus far! I don't want my highlights of negatives outshine the positives and possibilities this game has. I am strictly posting feedback to help entice changes, and even if what I'm providing is not what is needed desired, I just want to share and do my due diligence.
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Non-issue. The merging had been an ongoing issue with having to restore the client to fix, but with the most recent patches they seem to go rather quickly. Even after restoring/repairing previous launchers, the download speed was relatively fine (about 20-45 minutes) for the full restore/repair when I have 20mbps download and 10 upload.
Client performance:
Performance is generally good. The difference between medium and ultra settings are definitely noticeable when looking around towns, villages, and slightly with draw distance. However, for the majority of things I can barely tell. A lot of the grass and seaweed textures, the ground textures outside of cities, etc. seemed to be indistinguishable for the most part.
There are definitely some zones that are not optimized and clog up my fps more than other zones such as the underrealm area near the brood mother, or the illwind ruins. This also seems to happen client-side when there's 120ish people in the same area casting tons of spells, however, even though my frames take a hit, there seems to be little to no input lag when it comes to using spells or attacks which is really impressive. It's very fluid in that regard.
The last bit of this before the overview of this section is probably the only real negative. The rendering of the map/creatures in the world load really slow. You'll run into a group of enemies before you even see them and they just randomly spawn in around you and kill you. Really affects gameplay and immersion. On the bright-side, character models of players seem to load in from far away so you can see if players are coming into gank you or attack you in siege or open world. If creatures could have some level of rendering like the players I see this to be a non-issue.
Overall: This is really impressive considering I'm running a CPU/GPU of:
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4008 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics
And 64GB of RAM (which probably helps a little).
Server performance:
I'm not sure I can really tell if anything is wrong with this section (unless I misplaced something from the client performance and it should be in this section). For the most part, there's not a lot of issue that I can immediately see. My ping never really changed. I've been around 100+ players fighting dragons, inside populated dungeons, during siege, etc. Everything seems to work fine and has little to no input lag. Devs even spawned 1,000+ bears with 100 of us in town. My fps took a shit, but network and everything held up fine. It was really impressive. Even with my under-qualified GPU, it didn't catch fire, so that's a plus
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900x
GPU: GeForce 3090 FE
Ultra Graphic setting
FPS: 75-100 (some areas are graphic intensive)
Low FPS: 29 (stuttering noticeable)
GPU Usage: 97 - 99%
CPU Usage: 14 - 18%
Download/installation process - No problems here, was slow when a lot of people were downloading on first day.
Client performance - Never experienced a client crash. Was good.
Server performance - Played on Lyneth. Servers crashed once or twice. Other players would sometimes not be visable. Monster NPCs would sometimes randomly appear or disappear. When entering a new area, sometimes the server would be slow to display the monsters that you are quickly approaching, only to be shown at the very moment you are right next to them.
Server: Lyneth
Char. Name: Gin
Class: Lvl. 15 Mage
Playtime: 30+ hours
Combat Feedback
Node Feedback
Resources / Crafting Feedback
its 1/3 up the tree as if it hits the tree collision box. Still harvestable. Sometimes resources spawn underground, but I can still see the sparkling indicator and harvest the resource.
Environment Feedback
Mobs/Monsters Feedback
UI Feedback
Misc. Feedback
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