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.
Some A1 feedback that I'd love to discuss w/ my fellow testers
Maezriel
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Combat:
Obviously the biggest pain here are the melee animation locks and they've been covered fairly extensively so I'll not dig too much into it. Mages right now are hella strong and it's not b/c they're overtuned (fireball is a bit stronk but meh) it's mostly b/c they have the mobility that no other class has.
My big question for you guys is what's your thought on the toggle? Outside of the few quest that require it I've not really found a need to use it. I did try during a fight against Tremble but the grass is so high that I couldn't see anything and almost all of the spells we've seen thus far seem to favor the camera angle found w/ Tab. The more I play the game the more it feels like the focus should be on less of an action cam and more of a tab-esque combat w/ action elements and it's gonna take some pretty hefty overhauls of the combat and mobs to change my mind. I also worry about the validity of action combat and the desire for hard PvE fights, unless Intrepid limits movement to something closer to a Souls game or Outward I can't see how action combat and hard PvE are a thing b/c at the end of the day I can just dodge near anything.
Leveling:
Right now we're all kinda running the same quest over and over and a good number of them break fairly frequently so there's been times where I just have to go grind mobs to top off a level. Add to that all the quest that give outrageous loot (we're talking level 4 quest giving level 10 gear) and it's just not a fun experience. I feel that since the focus of this test is simply seeing what's broken leveling speed shouldn't be as big of a grind now as it would be later in development, cutting it in half would allow more of us to test a wider variety of spells and systems.
Movement:
The CD for the Mount Sprint should be cut in half. Don't get me wrong, I love a big map but at the moment I'm pretty much out of quest so in order to do anything during the test I end up spending the majority of my time running from dragon-to-dragon and node-to-node. I know my viewpoints on leveling and movement might seem like blasphemy but we don't actually have that many testers—Norlan took forever to level it's Town Node simply b/c they don't have anyone playing on the server.
The increase to movement and leveling time is only in regards to the current A1 test so we can actually test different things and then further in development they should 100% get nerfed back to where they belong.
Performance:
I have a thread here discussing how my computer seizes up throughout my playthrough, regardless if I'm streaming or not. Location and time doesn't seem to make any difference and I've had it happen on two separate rigs. I also know others w/ higher end cards report similar problems while people on 1080's have absolutely no issues. I've wiped my computer and even went to a completely new one trying to figure out the issue and my last good idea is the uncapped framerates are causing issues.
Would love to hear if others have experienced the same problem
______________
W/ all this I am enjoying the A1 the fights are basic but fun, the mechanics are rough but there's a good foundation, and there's already a good deal of character w/ the NPCs which is nice to see.
Obviously the biggest pain here are the melee animation locks and they've been covered fairly extensively so I'll not dig too much into it. Mages right now are hella strong and it's not b/c they're overtuned (fireball is a bit stronk but meh) it's mostly b/c they have the mobility that no other class has.
My big question for you guys is what's your thought on the toggle? Outside of the few quest that require it I've not really found a need to use it. I did try during a fight against Tremble but the grass is so high that I couldn't see anything and almost all of the spells we've seen thus far seem to favor the camera angle found w/ Tab. The more I play the game the more it feels like the focus should be on less of an action cam and more of a tab-esque combat w/ action elements and it's gonna take some pretty hefty overhauls of the combat and mobs to change my mind. I also worry about the validity of action combat and the desire for hard PvE fights, unless Intrepid limits movement to something closer to a Souls game or Outward I can't see how action combat and hard PvE are a thing b/c at the end of the day I can just dodge near anything.
Leveling:
Right now we're all kinda running the same quest over and over and a good number of them break fairly frequently so there's been times where I just have to go grind mobs to top off a level. Add to that all the quest that give outrageous loot (we're talking level 4 quest giving level 10 gear) and it's just not a fun experience. I feel that since the focus of this test is simply seeing what's broken leveling speed shouldn't be as big of a grind now as it would be later in development, cutting it in half would allow more of us to test a wider variety of spells and systems.
Movement:
The CD for the Mount Sprint should be cut in half. Don't get me wrong, I love a big map but at the moment I'm pretty much out of quest so in order to do anything during the test I end up spending the majority of my time running from dragon-to-dragon and node-to-node. I know my viewpoints on leveling and movement might seem like blasphemy but we don't actually have that many testers—Norlan took forever to level it's Town Node simply b/c they don't have anyone playing on the server.
The increase to movement and leveling time is only in regards to the current A1 test so we can actually test different things and then further in development they should 100% get nerfed back to where they belong.
Performance:
I have a thread here discussing how my computer seizes up throughout my playthrough, regardless if I'm streaming or not. Location and time doesn't seem to make any difference and I've had it happen on two separate rigs. I also know others w/ higher end cards report similar problems while people on 1080's have absolutely no issues. I've wiped my computer and even went to a completely new one trying to figure out the issue and my last good idea is the uncapped framerates are causing issues.
Would love to hear if others have experienced the same problem
______________
W/ all this I am enjoying the A1 the fights are basic but fun, the mechanics are rough but there's a good foundation, and there's already a good deal of character w/ the NPCs which is nice to see.
If I said something that you disagree w/ feel free to say so here.
1
Comments
I prefer exploring with the reticle, so I am often in action combat mode.
I also prefer targeting with the reticle so will hop off a mount and switch to action combat. I will hit Q to lock target. I hit Tab maybe 1% of the time. Even as a Dwarf, I have never felt I needed to tab through grass...yet.
In Siege, targeting sucks all around as a Cleric. I gave up on tab during siege about a month ago - maybe it's better now, but I haven't tried it. Reticle with Q lock feels a bit better now during Siege, but still sucks.
I toggle out of reticle mode to use the UI, not to choose targets.
Leveling:
Leveling was faster about a month ago. Reading that book near Headmaster Vargus gave 1000 xp, but now only gives 10 xp. Same for talking to Landry, I think. So, we probably have slower xp gain for something the devs are testing. Plus, double the xp would probably mean that most people hit max level in half a day and then still have 3 days left with nothing much to do.
Movement:
I just wish we could use the same key for Mount Sprint as we do for regular Sprint.
And then, at this point, it would be infinite.
Performance:
My fans kick in whenever I'm playing the game, but the game almost never siezes when I'm playing solo.
Sometimes the game gets a bit jerky if I'm in a group (which usually means someone in the group is streaming). But that's also usually near water or near a pack of mobs.
I've brought this up in another thread too, but basically the beauty of attempting a solid hybrid system is that you CAN just play tab targeting, while someone else can play action.
The real challenge comes from trying to distinguish the play styles enough to feel good, while also not making one 'optimal' over the other.
Leveling:
I think grinding mobs should be part of the leveling experience. (how much? that's up for debate) But generally speaking, grinding should be fairly equivalent to questing in terms of xp/hr. If I'm a player that just enjoys chilling with friends, roaming the world and killing things...I should be able to do that without feeling like I'm missing out on much in regards to quests.
I think one of the worst things game designers can do is make some system in the game that is completely worthless when compared to another. (ie: questing vs grinding) Let players CHOOSE how they want to level, and don't force them into a specific direction by making something WAY more efficient for that particular goal.
Movement:
Overall, I'm generally against implementing specific 'buffed' mechanics while testing. I've read a few suggestions with similar ideas, and I totally understand...but I think it ends up being counter productive. How many people will not understand which mechanics are intentionally 'buffed' - leading to unnecessary feedback when they eventually get nerfed? We also want to test the whole game as intended, why spend time testing things that we know are temporary? (Obviously there are contradictions to those questions, but hopefully you get my point)
The big issue right now is that whereas you can technically have an action camera...it really does (and I predict it likely will) feel like tab combat. I still think that unless Intrepid designed Ashes w/ movement as limited as we see in a Souls game or something like Outward you can't really have difficult action combat since you can just kite/dodge everything and if you restrict movement like that and have tab target as an option then you've got problems w/ PvP.
Right now questing is the absolute bulk of leveling, it's hard to say that shouldn't be the case though b/c even though grinding mobs can always be an option...it'd be really broken if I could level as quickly farming one area of mobs as someone running quest. Think Classic WoW Mage xp farming levels of broken.
For this I think if you've paid $500 to participate in the test to turn around and not even read the notes and understand what exactly the goal of the test is then that's kinda on you. Not something that should hold Intrepid back.
Hell we just need an option since half the big chains are broken
We need to define what 'broken' means in this context. It seems you are in the mind set that questing is the more 'correct' way to level. Do you think it is unfair for someone to level as fast grinding mobs vs questing?
If they are about the same, I don't see a problem.
Also speaking of Classic WoW...I think it doesn't do a terrible job at allowing alternate ways to level. Can obviously be improved upon.
Mob grinding is frankly just too exploitable to a valid form of leveling quickly b/c it almost always blows past questing.
Ok, I see what you are saying.
Personally, I still think having grinding be viable outweighs the risk of people finding exploits. The biggest reason for that, is because when a player knows that grinding mobs is essentially useless for leveling...killing them becomes a 'waste of time' (even if you are doing a kill X mobs quest)...it just FEELS bad.
When I was leveling in classic WoW, it felt good to kill mobs, because I knew that's where most of the leveling XP came from them anyway. Killing something never really FELT like a waste of my time.
Now we can also tie in the PvP element that this game will have...let's say someone DOES find an exploit for leveling fast (fast spawn rate/big exp/whatever). This area potentially becomes a PvP hotspot for player interaction - also a good thing for a game of this nature.
If a comparision needs to be made I would say quest speed buff you gain from that one quest feels far better for game play. I would suggest 60 to 75% near that would be a huge improvement.